12/31/98

A new mandate by the FCC requires phone companies to make a $2.2
billion contribution to connect schools and libraries to the Internet,
with the cost of the regulation passed along to consumers in the form
of higher telephone charges. Nearly half of American classrooms now
receive Internet access through contributions from private-sector
software companies, for whom the new mandate may be a significant
entry barrier when competing with telephone companies for the Internet
market. It is also debatable why students should be surfing the Web.

[Ed.: The General Accounting Office later found that the firm
charged with hooked up the nation's schools to "below cost" Internet
connections had spent $18.8 million without yet hooking up anybody to
the Internet.]

To protect local consumers from fraudulent impostors, the witches and
seers of Bucharest, Rumania, are forming their own labor union. Only
those who can really see the future and lift evil spells will be
allowed to join, explains Madame Lucretia, clairvoyant.

After the University of Connecticut athletics department was accused
of wrongfully favoring petite cheerleaders, school authorities
announced plans to abandon a popular "human toss" routine and
decreed that pyramid formations would henceforth be limited to two
levels high.

12/30/98

In Belgium, a previously unknown group called the Association for
Consciously Single Mothers claimed responsibility for the theft of
several statues of Joseph from Christmas nativity installations. A
note left behind in some of the nativity cribs called for the right
of "self-determination (for women), to artificial insemination, to
voluntary single motherhood and to... immaculate conception."

12/28/98

In conjunction with Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television, film stars Matt
Damon and Ben Affleck are working to make Howard Zinn's 1980 book,
A People's History of the United States,
into a ten-part miniseries. Zinn's most popular work was identified
by Matt Damon's savant character as especially intelligent in the film
Good Will Hunting, whose viewers may have also recognized Zinn's
influence on two of Damon's speeches: a highly intellectual barroom
put-down of a Harvard
student, and a rage about the military-industrial complex during a job
interview.

The faster the southern Republicans rush to dump Clinton, the greater
his popularity will be among blacks. Many blacks see impeachment as a
thinly disguised attempt to hammer the president for acting and
speaking out on black causes, and as a backdoor power grab for the
White House in the year 2000—and they're right.

But as long as southern Republicans control such a huge bloc of
congressional votes, they believe that impeachment is the civil war
they can win.

It took the city of Philadelphia ten years to dismiss a school
employee who was late to work nearly every day, and who had spent the
entire time undergoing psychiatric treatment aimed at remedying his
"neurotic compulsion for lateness." The city failed to dismiss
another employee who was chronically absent because he went off to
play pinball and video games. His union argued in its grievance that
he suffered from a gambling addiction, a protected handicap.

Arthur Miller, the playwright, in the New York Times, October 15, 1998:

In any case, those who think it trivial that Mr. Clinton lied about a
mere affair are missing the point; it is precisely his imperious need
of the female that has unnerved a lot of men, the mullahs especially,
just as it has through the ages. This may also help to account for
the support he still gets from women. He may be a bit kinky, but at
least he's not the usual suit for whom the woman is a vase, decorative
and unused.

12/24/98

Angry parents hounded Ruth Sherman from her job as a third-grade
teacher at Brooklyn's P.S. 75, leaving death threats and calling the
white teacher a bigot and a "cracker," because she used a book called
Nappy Hair
in class. The book, a critically praised children's story designed to
promote black self-esteem, features a young girl's hard-to-comb hair
as a metaphor for racial pride and the girl's independent spirit, but
some students and parents interpreted it as a racial slur. The author,
Caroliva Herron, who is black, rallied to Sherman's defense, but
Sherman says she no longer feels safe teaching at P.S. 75.

A memorandum, from White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes to
Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, regarding the
"Announcement of the Arkansas Sex Education Program," October 10,
1998:

The President was somewhat mystified as to why there was no mention of
him in the 3 October 1998 article in the Arkansas Democratic Gazette
entitled "Sex Can Wait plan gets $200,000 grant: Federal Aid to
benefit 16 school districts." Apparently the program is called "Sex
Can Wait" and will receive some $200,000 this fiscal year for teacher
training, implementation, classrooms and evaluation. According to the
article, to quote, the money comes from the federal office of
Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, which apparently is within the HHS.

Obviously, not every announcement will specifically refer to the
President, but all federal departments are being urged to make sure
that announcements of grants and other programs refer to the
President.

12/23/98

Following the death of a child by strangulation, the
Consumer Product Safety Commission
announced the recall of more than 10 million toy
basketball sets. The product's mortality rate (one) since its
introduction in 1976 is less than a thousandth of that the average
American faces each time he gets into an automobile.

After being turned down for a job as a police officer in Salem,
Massachusetts, Charles Brown was awarded $100,000 by the state
Commission Against Discrimination for emotional distress. Mr. Brown
reported that he burst into tears when he so much as saw a cop on the
street, leading a few local residents to wonder how he would behave
when confronted with a criminal.

12/21/98

Diane McWhorter in Newsday, December 21, 1998:

Bill Clinton, obviously, is no Jesus Christ.... But indulge me in a
political parable. A besieged conservative establishment that claims
absolute custodianship of a nation's laws furiously defends its
dwindling power base against a charismatic upstart from the sticks.
Showing a certain blithe contempt for those laws, the new guy
challenges the whole concept of what that nation is. Where his
opponents have thrived on division and exclusion, he lays hands on
just about everyone, rich and poor, sinners and saints, hipsters and
squares, red and yellow, black and white, even women. In return, they
reward him with a mysteriously enduring faith....

These right-wing Republicans are like the Sadducees of the Jewish
nation, the reactionary vested interests who carried out their narrow
agenda through a strict interpretation of Jewish law—a code in which
God's law was inseparable from the nation's law. The Republican's
impeachment mantra—"the rule of law"—ostensibly referred to the
Constitution. But their conflation of American law and the absolutist
word of a fundamentalist's God was made sensationally clear on
Saturday, when Speaker-elect Robert Livingston stood in the well of
the House and declared himself a sinner, urging his fellow adulterer
in the White House to follow his example in abdicating his post....
Clinton's arch-enemies, meanwhile, flog the pieties of their "born
again" doctrine, even as their most obvious secular icon is the
country's corporate grim reaper, the tobacco industry. Theirs is a
static vision of humankind as debased and shameful, condemned before a
punitive God....

That is Clinton's other blasphemy in the eyes of his enemies. By
disgracing the sacrosanct office of the presidency, he also
demystified the patriarchy that has run the country for its share of
the closing millennium.

John P. Siegel of San Jose, California, in a letter to the Editor,
the Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1998:

In response to Martha Ackermann's Sept. 3 editorial-page commentary
"Bill Clinton, Sexist": Like Ackermann, I have pondered the apparent
inconstancies in Bill Clinton's record on women's issues but I have
come to an entirely different conclusion. I believe that Mr. Clinton
supports women, respects women, is not threatened by women and want to
promote women to positions of power and responsibility because he
acknowledges intelligence and talent regardless of the sex of the
individual.

I also believe that the Clintons, perhaps because of their
experience during the 1960s' so-called "sexual revolution,"
have learned guilt-free separation of sex and intimacy. A
sexual act is not about domination or submission, nor is it
about making love or an expression of intimacy, nor even a
fleeting moment of passion or overwhelming animal attraction.
It is simply fun, another individual-performance sport in
which one casually engages one's friends and acquaintances,
like golf, tennis, jogging or shooting baskets.

After researchers noted an increase in the number of French people who
no longer ate breakfast, Jacques Puisais, founder of the French
Institute of Taste, followed stereotype closely and managed to find a
way to blame this trend on America. Puisais told the Scripps Howard News Service
that French families once enjoyed a communal breakfast followed by a
trip by a family member to pick up croissants at the local baker's
shop. But then Kellogg's began advertising corn flakes as a breakfast
alternative, which Puisais calls a "miserable" and "inhumane" food
fit only to be consumed shamefully in solitude. As a result, Americans
were also responsible for a marked increase in loneliness, isolation,
and existential angst among the French.

[Ed.: To combat foul odors pervading the Paris Metro, officials
have developed a new "perfume," titled "Madeleine" after the
worst-offending station, which they plan to apply throughout the
system. The plan's developer, Pierre Pichat, research director at
France's National Centre for Scientific Research,
said the product is based on titanium dioxide, a chemical used in
suntan creams that freshens the air when exposed to ultraviolet
light. "The search for the right product has lasted years,"
commented Pichat. Perhaps they can also look into another brand-new
technology—it's called washing with soap.]

Daniel Shapiro, a professor of philosophy at West Virginia University,
was reported to the campus Office of Social Justice for using the
word "wife" in the classroom. There he learned that the word
"wife" is sexist and that he should instead use nonsexist terms such
as "friend" or "partner."

12/14/98

A disgusting mess was discovered at Swarthmore College's
Intercultural Center that turned out to be vomit and what appeared to
be excrement but was later determined to be chocolate cake with
sprinkles mixed in. The identity of the perpetrator was unknown, and
the motivation was unclear at best since the room where the mess was
found was used for any number of student support groups. College
officials were nevertheless quick to label the act an expression of
hate, and an anti-hate rally soon drew 500 people, with cries of
"respect, safety, unity" echoing through the campus.

Speakers described the mess as the work of "a handful of people who
are hateful and scared," and said the act "had the symbolic effect
of a hate crime." One speaker equated a general feeling of security
with personal space, saying, "when you violate that space, you
violate me." Another said he had cried all night: "I was overcome by
tears and mucous.... It wasn't a good cry; it was a bad cry." But
because of the rally, he now felt "tears of hope." The director of
the Intercultural Center drew tears from the crowd as she spoke about
the long, painful healing process the college would have to
undergo. A list of ten years' worth of harassing incidents was read,
one of which was criticism that one student incurred because her
boyfriend wore a dress.

The Pentagon estimates it will spend around $50 million in the coming
year to provide the impotence drug Viagra for American troops and
military retirees. The cost—roughly the price of two new
Marine Corps
Harrier jets or forty-five Tomahawk cruise missiles—is among
the unexpected military expenses that Pentagon officials recently told
Congress have come up since they made their original 1999 budget
requests. "Viagra sort of burst on the scene," Pentagon spokesman
Jim Turner said.

[Ed.: In another case of Viagra-induced price inflation, French
chef Jean-Louis Galland of Le Basilic served patrons beef in a crushed
Viagra sauce with fig vinegar and fine herbs. Viagra is illegal in
France, and authorities arrested the chef after discovering his plan
to conceal the drug.]

The Dutch Health Ministry said it would extend an experiment to
distribute free heroin to hard-core drug addicts after a three-month
pilot scheme showed no serious, undesired side-effects. However, some
heroin users complained about the quality of the heroin offered.

12/7/98

Following the arrest, in England, of former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet on charges brought by a Spanish judge, the Cuban American
National Foundation, an exile group, asked a Spanish court to seek the
arrest and prosecution of Cuban President Fidel Castro. At the time of
Pinochet's arrest, Castro was an honored guest at a conference of
Latin American presidents that was being held in a Spanish castle.

CANF says Castro, along with his brother Raul and several associates,
should be tried on charges of genocide, torture, and terror. The group
says its confirmed list of 300 cases of victimization by the Cuban
dictator likely will be expanded to include 18,000 cases, including 12
U.S. citizens and five Spaniards. Asked by a reporter from the Spanish
daily El Mundo if he feared that an extradition order would be
filed against him, too, Castro replied, "I belong to a species which
is above arrest. You cannot compare our two cases."

Following the Cubans' lead, a group of Haitian exiles have now called
for the extradition of former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"
Duvalier, who, along with his father, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier,
they charge with some 60,000 political executions during their
combined 29-year regime. Following popular upheaval leading to his
ouster in 1986, the younger Duvalier led an extravagant life in exile
on the French Riviera. But after his wife divorced him, he gradually
ran out of money and was briefly employed by a neighbor as a gardener.
Duvalier, whose exact whereabouts are unknown, is reportedly amused at
the effort to extradite him.

From an Associated Press item about Monica Lewinsky's deal to
publish her memoir with Michael O'Mara Books and use Andrew
Morton as a ghostwriter:

O'Mara said there was a "strong personal chemistry" between
the former White House intern and Morton. "We put the two of
them together in a New York hotel room last week, and she
said yes immediately."

Leonard Pitts, Jr., in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 2, 1998:

One hesitates... to distract from what Sosa and McGwire have
accomplished. They are said to be good guys—decent, caring
and humble in welcome contrast to the swaggering malcontents
we've seen too much of in sports lately.

On the other hand it is, perhaps, useful to remind ourselves
that even in our oldest and noblest major sport as played by
men we like and respect, there is in the national psyche
something small and un-evolved that gravitates towards a
white man for no better reason than that he is white.

In a very real sense, Mark McGwire had Sammy Sosa beaten
before either of them ever picked up a bat.

This, too, is as American as it gets.

The Washington Post echoed the sentiment:

For all that is inspiring and wholesome about the home run derby, it
also illuminates the eternal American dilemma of race. It is McGwire
who has the overwhelming advantage over Sosa in the competition for the
public's heart. (Internet search engines find McGwire's name more than
twice as often as Sosa's.) Is that because the Cardinal is the better
slugger, or is it a matter of color, ethnicity and language?

Sosa, a native of the Dominican Republic, has expressed gratefulness
for his success and love for the country that made it possible. He
later beat out McGwire for National League MVP status.

12/3/98

Letter to the editor, the Boston Globe, December 3, 1998:

I found your characterization of Rita Hester ("Stabbing victim a
mystery to many," Metro/Region, Nov. 30) degrading and potentially
misleading.

Throughout your coverage of the incident you refer to Hester as "he"
and a transvestite. If Hester was known socially and to neighbors only
as a woman, it is not likely that she was a transvestite but rather
was probably a transsexual and should have been referred to using
female pronouns.

A significant number of people live as the opposite gender and are
socially perceived by all they meet as that gender. To reduce Rita
Hester's life and dignity to the level of "a man in women's clothes"
is disingenuous and disappointing.

A little more sensitivity to the hardships these people face would
have reflected far better upon your journalistic integrity than the
rather voyeuristic portrayal that did appear.

12/2/98

After Howard Stern decided to spank the backside of one of the guests
on his CBS television show with a dead fish, Dawn Carr, campaign
coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
publicly condemned the action, commenting that it "shows a sad
disrespect for life, certainly for the lives of those fish."